Cops develop digital 'big bro' for girls' safety

The police's soon-to-belaunched call-n-lodge complaint against phone bullies for women will now have add-on facilities for office and sexual abuse victims too.

The decision has been taken in the wake of recent spurt in crime against women in the city.

The idea is to provide maximum protection to the victims with less formalities on their part. Of course, the victim will have to dial up the computer-linked special cell and detail the problem to the cop on duty. The rest will be police’s responsibility -- right from conducting the probe, issuing warnings and initiating a legal action against the accused.

The system was initially planned to entertain complaints of phone stalking-indecent calls, SMSes and MMSes. But now it would also entertain complaints of girl teasing, sexual harassment, molestation and physical and cyber stalking.

The set-up has been designed to keep the identity of the girl (complainant) safe. The cops will initially issue warnings to the accused and themselves register FIRs against them if required.

“The system will have some more added features then it was planned initially. The added features would also provide option for girls and women to register their complaints by one call to computer linked call-up system. The set-up would become operational by the end of this month,” said Navniet Sekera, deputy inspector general of police (DIG), who has developed the set-up at the initiative of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Sekera said the cops would also be sensitised on handling cases of crime against women. He said the counselling sessions would be organised for them in the next three months before including the features of entertaining physical stalking cases in the set-up. “We decided to include the features to entertain the cases of physical stalking and cyber-stalking, as the girls usually hesitate in approaching police directly. And in many cases, they refrain from registering complaints owing to socio-psychological constraints.” The idea is to help them register complaints and fight for their rights in legal way without fearing any system or person. Gradually, there will be fear among bullies who take girls’ constraints as their weakness and keep on harassing them, he said.

Sekera said the basic set-up was already planned for phone stalking, only some additional features are to be added on to entertain complaints of physical harassment. He said the girls and women could also dial-up the number in case there are being trouble through social networking sites, e-mail or other means of cyber technology. This single platform would provide the complete solution for all types of problems faced by women.